The future of a teenage girl is now in the small hands of the unborn baby. There are many teen pregnancies happening in the U.S, and a lot of teenagers will have to struggle with a huge responsibility in their lives now. People believe that when a teenage girl makes the mistake of getting pregnant, her life is over. Then, there are optimistic people who believe that pregnant teenagers don’t have ruined lives. In San Mateo High, there are students that do know pregnant teens and a few sophomore and junior girls voiced their opinions about teen pregnancy. “If I…

Do you let others influence what you feel is right? If you do, you are experiencing peer pressure. Many factors including social interactions, media, or even music can apply pressure to conform. It can be extremely difficult to say no but that no just might save your entire future. So why do we feel these pressures? Well Dr. B. J. Casey from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University wrote that “teens are very quick and accurate in making judgments and decisions on their own and in situations where they have time to think. However, when they have to make…

“Ahh! I have a test for APUSH next period! Oh my god, the homework took forever..” This is a common conversation heard in the halls this year. Everyone is stressed out, all the time. Junior year is finally here and we can feel the pressure already. AP’s, SAT’s, college hunting are all just around the corner, and do we really know what to do? “Junior year is obviously a stressful year, not just with school, but with the constant questions from both family and friends if we’re ready for college. It’s hard to even think of college when all I…

Racism seems like such an antiquated term in our society. It is highly unaccepted and scorned according to modern standards. So why does it seem that older people are excused from hard criticism when they say racist or inappropriate things? Frankly, I am tired of the terms, “They’re from a different time” and “Things were different back then.” This gives the older generation an excuse to act with the same standards from their youth. Excusing these racist behaviors just desensitizes our society to this “old humor” and promotes the acceptance of racism. Surprisingly, many people in our society are guilty…

March Madness is over with Duke fans rejoicing and basically everyone else muttering to themselves. Last year, the University of Connecticut won the NCAA College Basketball Championship, but it ended with a startling quote by star UConn guard Shabazz Napier “There are hungry nights when I go to bed and I’m starving” Shabazz Napier went hungry in college as thousands bought jerseys bearing his name and came to watch him play, and because Napier never saw a dime of that money. In fact, NCAA players are legally barred from taking any compensation outside college scholarships, except how can one get…

Since the invention of the video game, developers have worked countless hours to improve the amount of pixels they are able to display on the computer screen to create graphics, but just how far can they go? People talk of games approaching levels of life-like fidelity, but to make this kind of detail within an image, whole teams of people must spend more and more time while creating their game just to make it look better. This leads to less time being devoted to actually creating a fun game to play and instead focuses on making pretty-looking scenery. If graphics…

According to Sir Peter Blake, “ new technology is common, new thinking is rare.” Why think for yourself when there is a wonderful, intelligent computer there to do the thinking for you? We as humans rely on technology to think for us, when we re perfectly capable of thinking for ourselves. Personal technology is decreasing our intelligence by causing us to be reliant and it shortens our long-term memory. Technology causes people to become too reliant on it. In other words we don’t need to remember the information in our brains because we can rely on technology to store it…

First of all, cultural appropriation and cultural exchange mean the same thing. The only reason I’m distinguishing the two is because the phrase “cultural appropriation” has started to develop a negative connotation. Hopefully, writer to reader, we can get rid of that. Cultural appropriation and cultural exchange mean the same thing, the adoption of a foreign culture’s elements. Now there are certain reasons this can be done; to show acceptance or appreciation, or to mock the idea. Unfortunately, the latter is moderately common, though less prominent than the former. The issue is obvious with the latter but many seem to confuse the two motives and brand the…

Uh-oh, it’s that time of the month again. Time to find your stash of chocolate, netflix password, heating packs, tubs of ice-cream, and of course your pads and tampons. Sounds like the perfect period. But, that is a long list of items to deem as convenience. Imagine a life without any of those. Yes, a life without ANY of those; including tampons and pads. Believe it or not, there are women that go through the struggle of keeping their menstruation within budget and end up depending on unhygienic sanitation methods, such as cloth. Most of us have grown up in…